Creature Quotes: Inspiration for Vegans

Credit: Photo taken by Jim Champion in New Forest National Park, Hampshire, U.K.

When we 21st century citizens awake, one by one, to the horrors inflicted on animals and admit our role in the violence, we may believe we’re the first generation to question society’s unethical treatment of our creature kin. That wouldn’t be true. From the beginning of recorded history and undoubtedly in prehistoric times, man has felt empathy for animals. Indeed, some of the best ethical minds throughout the centuries have not only ceased using animals for their own gain, but have pricked the conscience of their fellow man by writing about these injustices.

As a new vegan, I received support for my moral stance from the pen of my predecessors. I found their insights on the natural fellowship between humans and nonhumans so inspiring that I assembled a compendium, Creature Quotes: Advancing Toward Freedom For All Species, comprised of 1,000-plus pages of quotes by hundreds of men and women who dared to speak out for the rights of individuals across the spectrum of species.

If you’re on the verge of becoming vegan and need a boost, you might want to scroll through http://www.creaturequotes.com/ and let the thoughts of these gentle mental giants be your morale-boosters.

Be moved by the tenderness of Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, who was called “The Heretic King” after he banned animal sacrifice: ”The butcher relenteth not at the bleating of the lamb; neither is the heart of the cruel moved with distress. But the tears of the compassionate are sweeter than dew-drops, falling from roses on the bosom of spring.”

Be proud to stand beside one of the foremost animal ethicists of all time, Henry Salt, a 19th Century English social reformer who prophesied in his 1897 book Cruelties of Civilization, “The emancipation of men from cruelty and injustice will bring with it in due course the emancipation of animals also. The two reforms are inseparably connected, and neither can be fully realized alone.”

Be heartened by the self-sacrificial sentiment of Care2.com’s Angel Flinn: “Becoming vegan means renouncing one’s personal stake in the most widespread and socially accepted injustice of all time, and to do this, we have to be willing to see nonhuman slavery for what it is.” (Find more by Flinn at http://www.gentleworld.org/.)

Be steadied by the moral compass of filmmaker James LaVeck, who reminds us not to fall victim to the “happy meat” mindset in this Satya piece: “Let us not forget, there is a reason why human rights groups do not develop or endorse ‘humane’ methods of torturing and executing political prisoners, and why children’s rights advocates do not collaborate with the international pornography industry to develop standards and special labeling for films that make ‘compassionate’ use of runaway teens. To do such things is to introduce moral ambiguity into situations where the boundaries between right and wrong must never be allowed to blur. To be the agent of such blurring is to become complicit oneself in the violence and abuse.” (More of LaVeck’s essays are at http://www.humanemyth.org/.)

Reformer SBH Clay likes to keep a low profile by letting the good folks in Creature Quotes do most of the talking. Her carnist-to-vegetarian-to-vegan ethical evolution, as well as her hopes and dreams for the collection of quotes she spent two years compiling, may be found in this March 29, 2011, guest blog at blogger Bea Elliott’s Once Upon A Vegan.